14 DAY TRIAL // Just days after the death of Hollywood actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, the police have already began cracking down on people suspected to have aided the premature demise of the screen icon.
The New York Daily News is reporting that three men and a woman were arrested in a downtown Manhattan apartment building. They believe that the group is responsible for supplying Hoffman with the drugs that ended up killing him.
In the arrest, the police also seized 350 bags of heroin from the apartment the alleged drug dealers operated in. The bust was made after the police obtained details from informants' tips about the two men in their 50s and the man and the woman in their 20s.
It is now being claimed by police that they are considering extending the investigation to see if this group is actually part of a larger drug distribution ring.
The 46-year-old Hoffman was found dead by friends on Sunday in his Manhattan apartment in his shorts, with a needle sticking out of his left arm and 70 baggies of heroin.
It was suspected that the lethal heroin mix was laced with the powerful anesthetic fentanyl, but preliminary testing shows there was no such drug in the mixture. This particular strain of heroin was linked to killing 22 people in Pennsylvania, which is why police figured it could be responsible for the actor's death too.
The bags of heroin found in Seymour's apartment had “Ace of Spades” written on them, while others were stamped with “Ace of Hearts.” None of the bags of the drug seized in yesterday's arrest had such symbols printed on them.
An autopsy has already been performed on Hoffman's body, but the toxicology reports are going to take some time to come out. They will confirm with certainty what caused Hoffman's demise.